Appian’s Roman History, Volume I

Name: Appian’s Roman History, Volume I
Author: Appian of Alexandria

Ancient Greek with Horace White’s English translation

Appian’s Roman History, Volume IBook III · Fragment I

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Book III · Fragment I

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Ancient Greek

p. 58

ὅτι οἱ Ῥωμαίων στρατηγοὶ Κορνήλιος καὶ Κορουῖνος, καὶ Δέκιος δημότης, Σαυνίτας νικήσαντες ὑπέλιπον Καμπανοῖς φύλακας πρὸς τὰς Σαυνιτῶν ἐπιδρομάς. οἱ δὲ φύλακες οἵδε Καμπανοῖς ἁβροδιαίτοις καὶ πολυτελέσιν οὖσι κοινωνοῦντες ἐφθείροντο τὰς γνώμας, καὶ ἐφθόνουν ὧν ἔχουσιν ἀγαθῶν, αὐτοὶ πενόμενοι καὶ τὰ χρέα δεδιότες τὰ ἐν Ῥώμῃ. τέλος δὲ ἐπεβούλευον τοὺς ξένους ἑαυτῶν ἀνελόντες ἕκαστοι τὴν περιουσίαν κατασχεῖν καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἐς γάμον προσαγαγέσθαι. καὶ τάχα ἂν ἔπραξαν αἰσχρὸν οὕτω μύσος, εἰ μὴ Μάμερκος, ἕτερος Ῥωμαίων στρατηγός, ἐπὶ Σαυνίτας ὁδεύων ἔμαθε τὸ βούλευμα τῶν φυλάκων, καὶ ἐπικρύψας τοὺς μὲν αὐτῶν ἐξώπλισε καὶ ἀφῆκεν οἷα κεκμηκότας, τοὺς δὲ πονηροτέρους ἐκέλευσεν ἐς Ῥώμην ἐπί τινα χρείαν ἐπείγεσθαι, χιλίαρχόν τε αὐτοῖς συνέπεμψεν, ᾧ εἴρητο ἀφανῶς αὐτοὺς φυλάσσειν. ἑκάτεροι δʼ ὑπώπτευον μεμηνῦσθαι, καὶ περὶ Ταρρακίνην ἀφίστανταί τε

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book III

p. 59

WHEN the Roman generals Cornelius and Corvinus, and the plebian Decius, had overcome the Samnites they left a military guard in Campania to ward off the Samnite incursions. These guards, partaking of the luxury and profuseness of the Campanians, were corrupted in their habits and began to envy the riches of these people, being themselves very poor and owing alarming debts in Rome. Finally they took counsel among themselves to kill their entertainers, seize their property, and marry their wives. This infamy would perhaps have been carried out at once, had not the new general Mamercus, who was marching against the Samnites, learned the design of the Roman guard. Concealing his intentions, he disarmed some of them and dismissed them, as soldiers entitled to discharge for long service. The more villanous ones he ordered to Rome on the pretence of important business, and he sent with them a military tribune with orders to keep a secret watch over them. Both parties of soldiers suspected that their design had leaked out, and they broke away from the tribune

About This Reading Edition

Appian’s Roman History asked readers of the Roman Empire to reckon with how conquest, ambition, and civil conflict created their world; its questions about political power, cultural encounter, civic division, and the human cost of expansion remain urgent today. This approximately page-aligned parallel-text edition pairs the Ancient Greek text with Horace White’s English translation, following the 1912 facing leaves while omitting translator’s notes, figures, fragment attributions, marginalia, and unnumbered appendices.

Historical Text and Translation

Appian, a Greek-speaking Roman historian from Alexandria, wrote in the second century CE and arranged Rome’s expansion by the peoples and regions it conquered rather than as one continuous chronology—a strikingly original design. Much of his twenty-four-book work is lost, making the surviving books and fragments especially valuable.

About Horace White

Horace White was an American journalist, editor, and financial writer rather than a university professor. He led the Chicago Tribune and later the New York Evening Post, yet his Greek scholarship produced the fluent two-volume Appian translation of 1899 that became the English text of the original Loeb edition in 1912.

Rights

Appian’s ancient work, Ludwig Mendelssohn’s 1879 Greek edition, Horace White’s 1899/1912 English translation, and the Eulogikon Greek Preface are in the public domain in the United States. The Perseus digital transcriptions are reused under CC BY-SA 4.0; their attribution and share-alike terms continue to apply.